A casino is typically required by one or more regulatory bodies to maintain accurate records of all transactions (e.g., ticket in/ticket out transactions, player card transactions, cash or document deposits, and so on) initiated by or through an electronic gaming machine controlled by the casino. Conventionally, such records are communicated from an electronic gaming machine to a local or remote server approved by the regulatory body.
At a later time, physical documents (e.g., cash, tickets, and so on) received by the electronic gaming machine are manually collected by a casino employee. Specifically, the casino employee retrieves a locked “cashbox” from the electronic gaming machine and transports the locked cashbox on a locked cart to a secured location in the casino (a “counting room”). Space within a counting room is typically compact and can become quickly crowded with casino employees, drop carts awaiting counting, and accounting equipment.
Once in the counting room, another casino employee removes and unlocks the locked cashbox from the locked cart and extracts a stack of documents contained therein. Thereafter, the stack is counted and sorted to verify that all cash transactions reported by the electronic gaming machine exactly match electronic records. Thereafter, the emptied cashbox is relocked and placed on a locked cart to be reinserted into an electronic gaming machine by a casino employee.
However, the process of regularly collecting cashboxes, placing cashboxes onto a locked cart, transporting a full cart to a counting room, unlocking cashboxes, retrieving document stacks from unlocked cashboxes, processing (e.g., sorting, counting, and/or bundling) the retrieved document stacks, relocking empty cashboxes, and redistributing and reinserting locked empty cashboxes into electronic gaming machines is exceptionally time consuming and subject to human error.
In addition, a conventional casino counting room is typically large in total area and requires many full-time employees to receive and process drop carts in a time-efficient manner. As a result, conventional casino counting rooms require casino space that might otherwise be usable by the casino for other purposes, such as additional electronic gaming machines or for guest services (e.g., restaurants, shops, and the like). In addition, the cost associated with the employees required to operate a conventional casino counting room is often high.